With regard to item No3&comma; it's a shame that no mention is made of the Guard's role being safety critical&period; Having read through some BR Rule Books&comma; it's very obvious that the Guard has a large number of safety related duties to carry out in any given situation&comma; and in conjunction with the driver&period; Nothing has changed in this matter&comma; but the profit obsessed TOCs are blindly happy to shift all of the responsibilty on to one person - the driver&comma; thus creating a less safe railway&comma; which is in itself a contradiction to the DOTs own rules&period; The media are happy to blame strikes over this matter on "Out of date" Unions&comma; but Joe public needs to realise and understand that any proposal to diminish or remove the role of guards is a short sighted and dangerous idea&period;

There are many reasons&period;&period; my main reason perhaps is the preponderance of foreign companies and esp foreign state-owned railways profiting from our failed railways&comma; it’s just so ironic&period; Greater Anglia and all the rest need unmasking as who they really are&comma; most people don’t even know&period;&period; in this case I believe they are the Dutch state railway and Matsui&period;

Two loos on an almost full 12 carriage train&period; Insufficient number of loos for women & the disabled on large busy stations&period;&NewLine;Lack of sheltered & comfy seating on many mainline platforms&period;

3&period;1&percnt;&comma; I wish&comma; our Northern Rail fares went up by 40&percnt; in less than 2 years along with the introduction of afternoon peak fares&period; Our local line is electrified but hasn't seen an electric train in years as they were transferred to another region&period; The weekend strikes are an inconvenience but I fully support the strikers&period;

Our local station &lpar;Sherborne&rpar; has nearly 250&comma;000 passengers each year and apart from Fridays&comma; the ticket office closes at lunchtime&excl; &lpar;Need the loo when you have a couple Grandchildren with you&quest; Forget it&period;&period;&period;&rpar;

many countries offer way way better services and we dont because we have been conned &comma;simple as that&period;&period;&period; we can afford it&period;&period;&period; we should just do it &period;&period;&period;

I'm all for renationalisation&comma; but I don't think that things that are already controlled by the government make particularly good reasons to end privatisation&period; With that in mind&period;&period;&period;&NewLine;Fares increases&colon; the 3&period;1&percnt; average increase is essentially the result of how fares are regulated by the DfT - a cap based on inflation&comma; and franchise agreements that include an expectation that the train companies will make most or all of the fare increases that are allowed to them&period;&NewLine;The removal of guards&colon; Public-sector control of railways has not exactly been a fan of guards - British Rail's Network Southeast introduced lots of driver-only operation&comma; when TfL launched London Overground one of the first things they did was to get rid of the guards who remained on their routes&comma; and one of the main reasons for recent & current attempts by train companies to get rid of guards is that the DfT has demanded it through the franchising process&period;

In relation to point one&NewLine;The fares rise for regulated fares ie season tickets and most walk on fares are set by the Dft and always has been in privatisation&NewLine;There is a certain amount of flex for the operators but the percentage is set by the government not the RDG or Franchises&period;

Last chance to get your Bring Back British Rail merchandise! Orders must be placed by end Sunday 16 December to receive in time for Christmas. All proceeds support campaign materials and activities: bringbackbritishrail.org/supportBack by popular demand&excl; We've got a new run of our favourite Bring Back British Rail enamel badges first launched in 2010&period; Wear one with pride to show your support for our campaign&colon; bringbackbritishrail&period;org&sol;support ...

Last chance to get your Bring Back British Rail merchandise! Orders must be placed by end Sunday 16 December to receive in time for Christmas. All proceeds support campaign materials and activities: bringbackbritishrail.org/supportAll the Bring Back British Rail merch you need&excl; 😄 Get yourself a Rail Card Wallet and one of our new Embroidered Patches for just £6 inc&period; delivery and free stickers&excl; All proceeds help fund our campaign for a re-unified national rail network&comma; run for people not profit bringbackbritishrail&period;org&sol;bundle ...

‘Our fragmented railways are in a mess - expensive and unreliable. We need a nationalised service where all revenue goes back into the service and not shareholders’ pockets’ says Bring Back British Rail Supporter Barbara Segal, Bristol. Join us at: bringbackbritishrail.org ...

I see a comment on "dirty&comma; knackered trains" below&period; Perhaps I should point out that ScotRail has just leased some of British Rail's finest &lpar;at the time it was built&rpar; stock&comma; viz&period; a few HST sets&comma; and is attempting to run them on inter-city routes between the Lowlands and Aberdeen&sol;Inverness&period; Also&comma; Northern is still running Pacers &lpar;142&rpar; on many routes&comma; including &lpar;e&period;g&period;&rpar; Morpeth-Newcastle and Middlesbrough-Whitby&period; Again&comma; ancient BR stock&period; It is actually the present-day franchisees who are running the ancient&comma; clapped-out stock&period;

Contribute to the Williams Rail Review consultation&comma; making it plain that public ownership is the only workable long-term solution for running our railways&colon;&NewLine;https&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;gov&period;uk&sol;government&sol;consultations&sol;williams-rail-review

As I remember growing up in the 70s&sol;80s British rail were the butt of everyone’s jokes because always on strike &comma; dirty knackered trains with crap service and never on time & cost the country a fortune to run&excl;&excl;&excl; So are labour wanting to take us back to this

Railways are too expensive Anyway

If we remain in the EU their commitment to &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;free market &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote; economics and competition is written into the charter Its says there must be competition so even if nationalised there would have to be open to competition from other private companies That’s partly why the EU is a bosses charter

The tories don’t think so&period;

We shall never get anything right in funding transport too many Mps have varied interest in payment s as shareholders or directors in these accompanied

Chaotic&excl; Every journey- guaranteed&excl;

XX

Do any of the people contributing to this actually use trains regularly because the media talk cobblers most of the time&period; British Rail&comma; considering they were always underfunded&comma; were pretty good and weren't that expensive&period; What we now have is the worst of all possible options&period; The public subsidy has increased&comma; depending on where you live the service may have improved or not but all the prices have increased and will continue to do so&period;

Did you or your family/friends work on the railways in the south east region between 1948-1994 when they were publicly-owned? If yes, then please share your story! Our friends at NOR4NOR are helping to capture the history of our public transport workers' lives as part of Britain at Work London’s new Loco-Focus project. Follow the link to get involved. ...

Austerity Britain by David Kynaston has some good first hand accounts of the railways in it&period; Brilliant anecdote about a railwayman sorting out a pigeon that got into their rest room about that time&period;

Privatisation of GM Buses wasn't that bad until a few years ago&comma; because there were so many companies&comma; Bluebird&comma; Go Goodwins&comma; Stagecoach&comma; Arriva&comma; Finglands etc etc competing&comma; but it's more or less only First and Stagecoach&period; Which means almost all of the routes have been cut or are too expensive&period; We need to either see the return of lots of companies &lpar;Whilst banning Stagecoach from buying them&rpar; or the return of GMB&sol;GMPTE

Like most people in Britain, I think that a railway is a natural function of the state, and so ought to be run by the state – for the sake of coherence, transparency, continuity, accountability and national pride.

If the private companies that took over the national railways are cutting back and eroding services at a time when the climate crisis demands expanded low-carbon transportation alternatives to keep more of us out of planes, then these services too must be reclaimed.

Transport is an essential public service and ought to be publicly owned and publicly controlled. We need an enormous expansion in the investment in our railways and that is the best way of achieving it.

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